0:02

This is a HeadGum podcast. While

0:06

Andrew and Craig believe the joy

0:08

of discovery is crucial to enjoying

0:10

any well-told tale, they will not

0:12

shy away from spoiling specific story

0:14

beats when necessary. Plus these

0:16

are books you should have read by now. Hey

0:20

everybody, welcome

0:23

to Stop Homertime, a

0:26

podcast from the boys

0:28

at Overdo, which is

0:49

a podcast about the books you've been meaning to

0:51

read. My name is Craig. My name is Andrew.

0:54

And Andrew, we're back here. Many

0:57

folks have probably listened to episode

0:59

zero, but if they didn't, what

1:02

are we talking about? Talking about the

1:04

Iliad as translated. The Iliad, you know, from

1:06

school and literature

1:09

as translated by Emily

1:11

Wilson, friend of the show, who

1:13

also translated The Odyssey several years ago. We

1:15

read that. We had a good time. Come

1:17

back to read this and hopefully have another

1:19

good time, a slightly different good time. Yes.

1:23

And what we've done, if you have the

1:25

Iliad has 3.9 out of five stars on

1:27

Goodreads, like there's no, there's no pleasing anybody,

1:29

you know, I would be interested

1:32

to know what people's complaints are. Like,

1:34

I like to read the three star good actually, not right now.

1:36

And so we're not going to sing the song. I would like

1:38

to read the three star good

1:40

reviews for the Iliad for people who are like,

1:43

yeah, this is okay. But

1:45

what are they going to be? I didn't

1:47

like the characterization. There's not enough

1:49

explosions. There's no the Trojan horse doesn't

1:51

even show up. That's probably a big one. Yeah,

1:54

that's probably a big one. And

1:56

the like, is this the story about war that I

1:58

thought it was going to be as probably

2:01

hits for some people. We

2:04

talk in our episode zero about Homer again,

2:06

about where this comes from.

2:08

We talk about Wilson's translator

2:11

node and introduction. So go

2:13

back and listen to that if you have not already. We

2:16

really just wanted to dive

2:18

in, I think, with these.

2:22

So here we go. We're covering books

2:25

one and books two. Books

2:27

one and books two. Book one and book two.

2:29

Books one and two. Pick

2:32

one of them. And

2:36

so let me give you a top level summary

2:39

of book one. Andrew's going to

2:41

fact check me in case

2:43

I miss anything. Just

2:45

to set the table, and then we can kind of pick it

2:47

apart, and then we'll do the same for book two. And

2:50

then let's also read

2:52

Wilson's names

2:54

for each book, because I do those, I believe,

2:56

translators just come up with those. Can

2:59

you tell me the name for book one? Name for

3:01

book one is the quarrel. The

3:03

quarrel? OK, great. Starting

3:06

in the ninth year of the Trojan War, the

3:08

muse takes us, well,

3:11

the poet invokes the muse and takes

3:13

us to Agamemnon and Achilles arguing

3:16

among the Greeks. I don't know if

3:18

we mentioned interrupting my own

3:20

thing here. Yeah, you're interrupting your thing. You had

3:22

plans for this thing. I did. You came to

3:24

me with this thing. Good

3:28

content. Wilson refers to the Achaeans as

3:31

the Greeks, or whatever. I think it's

3:33

Achaeans, but I could be wrong. Well,

3:36

that's why we say Greeks. Agamemnon refuses

3:38

to give up the daughter of a

3:40

priest of Apollo that he captured

3:42

in war. And so Apollo is

3:45

ravaging the Greeks with plague. Achilles

3:47

asks, what's up with that? And

3:49

Agamemnon says he'll only give her up

3:51

if he can have someone else's prize,

3:53

like Achilles' prize, Briseis. Achilles

3:56

does not stop him, but he

3:58

does get so mad that he quit. So it's the war,

4:00

gets big mad, temporarily? He

4:03

then cries to his sea goddess

4:05

mom that he would really like

4:07

it if the Trojans punished the

4:09

Greeks for their insolence and disrespect,

4:11

and wouldn't it just be nice

4:13

if she enlisted Zeus on her

4:15

son's behalf? Anything

4:18

I missed? Those are the

4:20

big beats. Those

4:22

are the big beats. And

4:25

okay, so tell me, I don't know

4:28

that we need to do a full

4:30

Team Edward, Team Jacob on this, but

4:32

are we Team Agamemnon or Team Achilles?

4:34

Because I think that Achilles honestly brings

4:36

up some pretty good points. I can

4:38

never be Team Agamemnon. No. Agamemnon,

4:41

if you don't know, okay, so he's

4:43

the leader of the Greeks, he's the

4:45

big proud general

4:48

boy, he comes

4:50

from an ambitious heritage, he's referred to as the

4:52

shepherd of the people, shepherd of lords, lord of

4:55

men. Maybe

4:57

I'm just informed by other stories where

5:00

Agamemnon killed his daughter Iphigenia

5:02

to please a

5:04

goddess. I mean, you gotta please

5:06

a goddesses though. You do.

5:08

We've talked about that on Stop Homertime before,

5:11

where you gotta be nice to

5:13

everybody all the time because they could be

5:15

a god just ready to screw with your

5:17

entire life if you don't burn

5:19

them the right cow or whatever. I've

5:23

consumed enough Agamemnon

5:26

media that

5:29

while there is a point

5:31

in this book where Achilles does become

5:33

a bit of a whiny boy. He

5:35

does, yeah, the longer he goes, the

5:37

whiner he gets, which, yeah, it keeps

5:39

me from being like fully Team Achilles,

5:41

but I think Achilles starts on pretty

5:44

reasonable footing. Yeah, so do you want to

5:46

lay that out a little bit? Like

5:49

what are his complaints? I mean,

5:51

Agamemnon is... What

5:53

is he doing? He's... He's...

5:56

He's refusing to like solve the problem,

5:58

which is that there's play. Okay, yes, so

6:00

there's a plague and and Apollo is

6:03

doing it and a priest of Apollo

6:05

comes and says hey Agamemnon,

6:08

could you like give me my daughter back cuz it's

6:11

a Crisis, yeah been

6:13

taken by Agamemnon as his

6:15

trophy Wilson

6:17

talks under translators know a lot about women being

6:20

referred to as trophies. They're just kind of semi

6:23

interchangeable spoils of war a lot of the

6:25

time women are like in this case allow

6:27

in this in this poem

6:29

they are allowed to grieve and Be

6:33

you know captured that's kind of it.

6:35

Yeah and

6:40

The Prophet is like hey, could you give me

6:42

my give me my daughter back and Agamemnon says

6:44

no I'm not gonna do that. And

6:46

so the the Prophet asked Apollo.

6:49

Hey, can you rain? terror

6:51

down these Greeks and All

6:53

all Agamemnon has to do is give him

6:55

his daughter back and apologize and Agamemnon is

6:59

Very mad now go find me another trophy. So I'm

7:01

not the only Greek commander who lacks a trophy Yep,

7:04

that would be unfair. You can see

7:06

you can all see my trophy going

7:08

elsewhere. This big whiny baby just Just

7:12

once is woman trophy. Yeah,

7:14

and I just I was really struck

7:18

This read by like

7:20

hey, let me tell you the story

7:22

of the Trojan War But

7:25

what I'm really gonna open with is

7:27

two whiny baby We're gonna open nine

7:29

years in with these two big babies

7:32

and a killy Achilles starts off on pretty

7:34

good Yeah, pretty good footing. He said Lord

7:36

Agamemnon son of Atreus. No one is more

7:38

acquisitive than you How can the

7:41

valiant Greeks give you a trophy? We see no heaps

7:43

of treasure lying around ready to be divided up the

7:45

wealth that we have looted from the neighboring towns has

7:47

been shared out Shared out

7:50

you love the phrase shared out I

7:52

will fit got you and no I think that Emily

7:54

Wilson probably just did this so that the line would

7:56

scan That's what I'm gonna tell myself. But if you've

7:58

ever used the word shared out out in like

8:00

a professional context. I'm here to tell you

8:02

that there is a word that already means

8:05

shared out and it's just shared by itself.

8:08

You gotta be careful if you use the

8:10

phrase shared out around Andrew, he will unpack

8:12

your computer. I will shake a coffee can

8:14

full of pennies at you. Okay,

8:19

it's been shared out and would be unfair to make

8:21

the warriors return it all. You

8:23

have to send this woman to the god right now.

8:25

One day we Greeks will pay you back with treasure

8:27

worth three times as much or four if ever Zeus

8:29

permits us to destroy the high walled town of Troy.

8:32

So Agamemnon, if we do this thing that we

8:34

are all here to do and we are all

8:36

here to do it because of you, then we'll

8:38

give you more on the back

8:41

end to make up for this like minor do it

8:43

for points. Yeah. Yes.

8:46

No, Agamemnon, of course, is like, no, I'm not

8:48

going to do that. And then

8:50

Achilles gets mad. I did not come to Troy because

8:52

I wanted to fight against the warriors of Troy. They

8:55

never did me any harm at all. I came with

8:57

you, you brazen cheat, to please you to claim back

8:59

compensation from the Trojans for Menelaus and for you, you

9:01

dog face. Yeah. So

9:04

good. I

9:06

love dog face so much. What

9:12

and what Menelaus is the

9:15

person who Agamemnon's brother and the person

9:18

who Helen left to go be with

9:20

Paris in Troy, which

9:23

was part of the whole wedding with the gods. We talked about

9:25

that in episode zero. Again, not in the book. Again,

9:28

not really in the book. No, not at

9:30

all. So

9:33

yeah, Agamemnon doesn't want to

9:35

lose status. Achilles knows

9:37

he has enough status and also doesn't

9:39

want to lose it. And

9:42

Agamemnon's solution to this problem is

9:44

fine, I guess. I'll

9:48

give her up if I

9:50

can have someone else's. Yeah. It

9:54

is. I think

9:56

Agamemnon's being a big baby. I

9:58

think Achilles starts off okay. But

10:00

then eventually Achilles gets

10:03

mad about literally the exact same thing when

10:05

when Agamemnon is like, okay I'm gonna take

10:08

Briceus and Athena even

10:10

comes to Achilles and is

10:12

like, hey, could you not kill Agamemnon? That

10:14

part rules Do you

10:16

want to do you want to get into that? Yeah,

10:18

so I have any parts of that you want to

10:20

read I just wanted to read the end part that

10:22

said you will receive three times as many gifts one

10:24

day because you suffered this affront Listen to me hold

10:27

back like that literally the same day even the same

10:29

like number of times worth of things that you'll

10:31

get That's good. If you can just let

10:33

yourself suffer this one thing right now. I

10:35

don't have text. I'm glad you read that

10:38

it's the like he moves

10:40

towards Agamemnon his

10:42

sword comes out of his hilt like

10:45

a Scabbard

10:48

or whatever. Yes, yes, the the hilt

10:50

moves. That's what yeah hilt is and

10:54

Athena rushes in and like grabs him

10:56

by the hair and like pulls him

11:03

As we hear many times these Greeks they're

11:05

long haired they have flowing long they do

11:07

have flowing long locks of hair And

11:10

she says like Hera like favors you

11:13

both like you both are super cool

11:16

Like let's not ruin a good

11:18

thing here And we'll

11:21

see that the gods Play

11:23

more than one side. Yeah, they do a

11:25

lot of they do a lot of two

11:27

and three timing They they time a lot

11:30

of people. I think it is like we're

11:33

it's just neat to see

11:35

right away in this book that like we

11:38

are starting with Apollo has

11:40

started a plague and Athena

11:43

is showing up in the middle of this

11:45

like town hall meeting. Mm-hmm to

11:48

be like, hey, please don't kill that Please

11:50

don't kill that guy even like Agamemnon has

11:52

to be clear like insulted Achilles and like

11:55

the whole lot Terms that he knows how

11:57

to how to do it like that the

11:59

poem God is sing

12:01

of the cataclysmic wrath of great Achilles son of

12:03

Peleus We talked a little bit in the Odyssey

12:05

about like how important those first Lines

12:08

are because it's really defined. It's defining

12:10

what the poem is about and defining

12:12

like the most important characteristic of The

12:16

character who you're gonna be spending most of your time So

12:19

with the Odysseus, it was all about how he was you

12:21

know, he's clever and he also took a long time to

12:23

get home And this

12:25

it's about how Achilles is a mad mad

12:28

boy and Agamemnon at one point I

12:30

like this line your anger does not bother me at all.

12:32

He says to Agamemnon

12:35

or Achilles so like

12:38

this the defining thing about you as a

12:40

person. I don't care about it Yeah,

12:44

I was really struck by the

12:46

fact that she chose cataclysmic wrath

12:48

every other Any other

12:51

time I've encountered the opening of this poem

12:53

It's it's a version of rage or when

12:55

people tell this story they if they are

12:57

adapting it They sent her in on the

12:59

word rage and you know, it's

13:01

part and parcel with her decision to Break

13:05

from the exact number of lines that

13:07

she's like, you know, I think

13:10

cataclysmic wrath does the job I think that

13:12

is really what I want to get across

13:14

here And that's

13:16

kind of neat. I think it's pretty cool but

13:19

so yeah, he Achilles decides

13:22

to let Agamemnon

13:25

take his prize and He

13:28

also takes his ball and goes home and

13:30

Hannibal King you eat your people up. You

13:32

are a leader of non-entities Of

13:37

these classical diss tracks, yeah, very good it is.

13:40

Yeah, it is a bit of a Yeah

13:45

Which I do think yeah, I agree with

13:47

you Achilles comes out looking better in this

13:49

conflict. He comes out looking worse

13:52

When he is sad on the beach like

13:55

Skyping with his mom Before

13:58

she shows up. Yeah Tell me about that. So,

14:02

Agamemnon's, okay, so

14:04

like his buddy, I'm

14:07

used to Patroclus. I didn't think about

14:09

how it scans. That's Achilles' buddy?

14:11

Yeah, I think that's... Patroclus? We

14:14

could go with that for now and fix

14:16

it later. Fix it in a future episode.

14:20

He gets Achilles' girl

14:22

ready and they give her

14:24

away to Agamemnon's dudes and

14:27

Achilles is like, listen, you can take

14:29

her. You take anything else

14:31

and I will kill all of you. And

14:34

in the meantime, me and my Murmurdans,

14:36

we're not gonna do anything. We're

14:39

gonna sit here and

14:41

hope for the worse to all

14:43

of you. And then

14:45

he goes to the beach and he

14:47

cries and he's sad. And

14:51

it's mostly about his toy being taken

14:53

away. Yeah, his toy's been taken away,

14:55

but you know, and by extension, we'd

14:57

talk again more like intro translators note

15:00

stuff, like this is

15:02

kind of the way that

15:04

you show other people that you're like worth something

15:06

as a leader of Greek. So

15:08

it's not just about having

15:11

a, like a bubble taken away.

15:13

It's also about like grave public

15:15

insult, but it

15:17

is hard to, in a modern

15:20

read, it's hard not to notice

15:22

the sort of pettiness of this

15:24

central conflict that ends up like

15:26

killing many, many, many people. Well

15:29

yes. And his, so

15:31

his mom shows up, Thetis the sea

15:33

goddess. She is like a, she

15:36

is the water version of a dryad, whatever

15:38

that is. I think a daughter of

15:40

Poseidon too. It's pretty strongly implied if it's

15:43

not stated outright. One of the prophecies

15:45

about Achilles, I don't think it's, it's

15:49

a lot of things are not covered in this poem, but

15:51

it was that like he was

15:53

destined, whoever her son would be,

15:55

would like be more powerful than

15:57

his father. And so the

15:59

reason that that they like married her to a

16:01

mortal was so that she wouldn't

16:04

sleep with Zeus and she

16:06

would give birth to somebody more powerful than

16:08

Zeus. Yeah. Cause you know what? Zeus is

16:10

always looking over his shoulder and hoping that

16:13

nobody Cronus' him. Yeah,

16:15

for real. We get into that. Um,

16:18

and so his mom,

16:20

you know, comes out of the ocean and is like,

16:22

Oh my son, you're so sad. What's wrong? And

16:25

he talks for a long time. Why are

16:27

you crying? What pain has touched your heart?

16:29

Do not conceal it. Tell me and let

16:32

us both know. I'm going to say that

16:34

to Simon the next time he's crying. What

16:36

pain has touched your heart? Tell me and

16:38

let us both know. Yeah. Um, you can be

16:40

like, Oh, I, I threw something in the air

16:42

and I landed on my head. Okay. That's fine.

16:44

Um, I didn't want a thing,

16:47

but then I did want it. Oh man. That's

16:49

the worst. I'm going to cry

16:51

because you said I could have a thing. Whoops.

16:54

Um, and so

16:56

he, you know, goes, he walks her through

16:58

what has happened. It, I

17:01

was struck by the, the

17:03

patronymics of all the son ofs in

17:05

this poem that are mostly

17:07

there to like give you lineage and tell

17:09

you a little bit about like, you know, what kind

17:12

of mythological heritage these characters are from. But

17:14

also to tell you, you know, every, all

17:16

these characters are somebody's sales. Yeah. That's kind

17:18

of what I was thinking. All these, all

17:20

these large adult sons sitting around on the

17:22

beach crying about stuff. They're all just baby

17:25

boys. And he's like, Oh,

17:27

he took my toy and everyone

17:29

laughed at me, but they didn't really laugh because

17:31

they knew I could kill them. But now they're

17:33

laughing because I'm over here crying. And the, one

17:36

of the last things he says, which really

17:38

struck me as he says, he paid the

17:41

best Greek fighter. No respect, no

17:43

respect at all. Respect. So

17:45

Ronnie Dangerfield, Achilles, redeemed

17:48

and he success. You know, he says

17:50

to they just like, listen, mom, you,

17:53

you know, you get me,

17:55

you understand what I'm about. I

17:58

need you to help me. I need you to

18:01

make the Greeks suffer. I need you to

18:03

go talk to Zeus about it. Listen Let's

18:05

rehash the whole bit where you helped Zeus

18:07

and like, you know, you

18:10

have him on speed dial he'll listen to you kind of thing

18:12

and She's

18:14

like, all right, my son I will go do that.

18:16

I will go talk to Zeus for you. Yeah What

18:20

do you think about her to go to speak to his man speak to

18:22

her manager? What did you

18:24

think about the Zeus stuff because this is

18:27

this is like Material that I

18:30

am a little less familiar with Having

18:33

only read the like the full poem Once

18:37

yeah, I don't remember and

18:39

maybe you do I

18:41

don't remember how often we see just like

18:43

the gods hanging out in Olympus in the

18:46

Odyssey Like I know we get a lot

18:48

of Athena. Yeah, we get some Poseidon But

18:51

I'm not sure how much like a running

18:53

theme in the Iliad is like how

18:56

the human conflict on the ground is

18:58

also being mirrored in this like Smaller

19:01

conflict between the gods like small smaller in

19:04

terms of like character. Yes Yeah,

19:06

but like, you know larger in the

19:08

cosmic sense I guess but what I

19:10

am way more familiar with Adaptations of

19:12

the Iliad and I feel like this

19:14

is the stuff that gets cut when

19:17

you are adapting it to like

19:19

be a Modern war

19:21

story starring Brad Pitt or

19:23

you know, you're Trimming

19:26

it down to like be this kind of

19:28

focused tale on stage or something like you

19:31

don't have time to go to Olympus and

19:33

yeah because so much of what is happening on Olympus is

19:36

just like I'm not

19:38

gonna say it's marking time, but it is a lot of

19:40

it like Just showing you.

19:42

Oh the this this tide in the battle

19:44

is turning one way or another because some

19:46

God Decided to and they decided to because

19:49

like the last person who talked to them about

19:52

it one of them to do. Yeah. Yeah So

19:56

what is the thing you met you

19:58

alluded to it earlier the reason that zoom ultimately

20:01

helps Thetis was

20:04

because he was gonna get Cronus? Is

20:07

that what it was? I mean he's just he's

20:09

just in general is scared of being Cronus but

20:12

I think I think

20:14

she like freed him cuz like she

20:16

saved him from something. People tied him

20:18

up. Achilles mentions it at

20:20

some point he says, you quickly

20:24

summoned up to High Olympus the hundred-handed giant

20:26

who is named Briarius among the

20:28

gods but humans call him Aegean you call them

20:30

because his strength is even greater than his father's

20:32

he sat by Zeus exulted in his glory the

20:35

gods who live at ease were terrified and stopped in their

20:37

attempt to chain up Zeus you must remind him now about

20:39

all this. Basically you did

20:41

Zeus a solid. Go tell him that

20:43

you did it to him and he'll just yeah

20:46

just go remind him that he owes you

20:48

and then spend that

20:50

favor on me please mommy. Yes.

20:54

So here's the thing that's this was a struck

20:57

me funny in this whole Zeus section and

20:59

I do not remember this at all from any other

21:01

time I've read the Iliad. Zeus

21:04

is like okay I will I

21:07

will do this but he's like listen

21:09

lady you're gonna make

21:11

my wife mad you've imposed on

21:13

me a dreadful task to make an

21:15

enemy of Hera who is always scolding

21:18

me. Who's always scolding me? What

21:20

a honeymooner's marriage we have. One

21:22

of these days Hera. And

21:26

he says but I will try my best to

21:28

grant your wish and so that you will

21:30

trust me I shall nod my

21:33

firmest guarantee among the gods when I

21:35

have nodded with my head my word

21:37

is trustworthy

21:39

irrevocable sure what I have

21:42

promised must be carried out

21:45

you know who I thought of when

21:48

I read this I don't know who did you think of

21:50

Paul Hollywood I

21:52

thought of the Paul Hollywood handshake

21:55

and how it has been devalued in

21:57

modern Bake Off and nonetheless They

22:00

talk about Zeus is not a lot. Yeah

22:04

Yeah, and he's been stingier with it this season. I

22:07

think sure I think we're caught up He

22:10

gave out one or two. Maybe he's what he

22:12

does now instead of giving out a bunch of

22:14

them as he likes to give them Out at

22:16

unusual times. Mmm, like he'll give them

22:19

out during different parts of the Reasonable,

22:21

yeah, or he'll like come back and be like

22:23

I gotta shake your hand. Mmm. Yeah

22:26

But yeah, I was just like I don't remember this

22:28

thing about Zeus that he has like a famous It's

22:31

really I mean, it's a pinky swear sort of thing,

22:33

but he's like, yeah, and I'm gonna listen I can't

22:36

get you anything in writing. This

22:38

is class is this classic negotiating Stuff

22:40

like I can't get you anything in writing. Well, I

22:42

will do for you what I promise I will do

22:45

You know, I will not and My

22:48

not is my bond Okay

22:52

Is anything else strike you about this like

22:55

God's section, you know, he talks to

22:57

Hera he talks to Thetis Festus shows

22:59

up at one point. Yeah, I mean

23:02

let's be just talk about Zeus and

23:04

Herod quickly And then move on to

23:06

book two, but Hera basically sees him

23:08

and instantly clocks that he is up

23:10

to. Yeah As

23:13

soon as Hera saw him She realized that

23:15

silver-footed Thetis the child of this old sea

23:17

God had plotted with him immediately She scolded

23:19

Zeus. So just like he's always saying by

23:22

the way, she scolds him And

23:28

Says hey if you are making secret plans you

23:30

have to tell me and Zeus says Do

23:33

not here expect to know all my intentions. They

23:35

are too difficult to understand even for you. Although

23:38

you are my wife Oh my

23:40

god Stop asking stop asking me

23:42

all these questions if I had anything to

23:44

share with you. I absolutely would do it

23:47

I do think Wilson is doing a great job

23:49

of making this a really awful marriage that we

23:51

get to laugh at You

23:54

startle me. So this is then Zeus who gathers

23:56

clouds together answered you startle me. You always have

23:58

your notions I never get away with that anything.

24:06

Al Bundy Zeus? Yes, I mean basically he's

24:08

saying oh you got me but then he

24:10

goes ahead and does whatever he wanted to

24:12

do anyway. Which brings us into book two.

24:14

Yeah, I hope you had other stuff you

24:16

wanted to say. Just briefly like we do

24:18

see Hephaestus. Hephaestus will come back later in

24:20

the poem to do some stuff. Here

24:23

he is like hey Hera can you not

24:25

fight with dad please and

24:27

then he serves everybody wine and they all laugh

24:30

at him because he has like a limp, you

24:32

know the gods. There's

24:35

like more people trying to talk people into stuff

24:37

and not succeeding and changing the course of events

24:40

is what is happening. There's like a very thin

24:44

parallel I think between Hephaestus and their

24:47

psytes who's in the next book.

24:49

I'll see the guy who everybody yells at. Yeah, yeah,

24:51

yeah. Because he is the ugliest of

24:54

all the Greeks. Yeah. Okay

24:58

here's book two. Zeus gives

25:00

Agamemnon a dream. This one's

25:02

called The Multitude. That's a

25:06

great name for a book series. Somebody pick it up. Zeus

25:10

gives Agamemnon a dream of victory at

25:13

Troy so Agamemnon rallies his generals but

25:15

instead of just moving forward he

25:17

decides that he wants to test his troops

25:20

resolve. He tells them all to leave and

25:23

makes his generals bring everyone back. Odysseus

25:26

leads that charge thanks to Athena and

25:28

tells a pretty little

25:30

parable about victory delayed

25:33

for 10 years. We'll talk

25:35

about that. The armies organize themselves by

25:38

point of origin which leads to the

25:40

catalog of ships. Ships?

25:44

Why did I put a T on ship? Ships?

25:47

That's Greek. It's ancient Greek. And

25:52

the goddess Iris alerts the Trojans, mostly

25:54

Hector, that the Greeks are coming which

25:57

also leads to a catalog of

25:59

Trojans. Catalog of boys. Yeah.

26:01

Yeah I did

26:05

not recall this Agamemnon

26:08

passage at all this

26:10

whole like this whole thing with the love

26:12

inside into the like the God stuff. Yeah.

26:15

Yeah But but even

26:17

though like hey everybody leave But

26:20

yeah, they do this little reverse psychology

26:22

play acting thing to like what

26:24

is that about? Yeah, like

26:26

maybe maybe the book will go into this more or

26:28

maybe we just need to send Emily Wilson an email

26:31

Let's see if she has any theories What

26:35

are these guys sitting around doing all day

26:37

for nine years, you know, they are just

26:39

like ready to Gather

26:42

together a number of guys who

26:45

like make the earth groan because

26:47

there's so many of them walking on Like

26:50

they're ready to muster those forces in Inside

26:53

of a day and they're here for

26:55

nine years They hear so long that the ships

26:57

they came in have all like rotted in the

26:59

in the ocean Yeah, what

27:01

are they doing all day? Like it

27:04

is implied very lightly in one like

27:06

line in this That

27:08

they're kind of sitting around while leadership

27:10

argues over strategy all day. That might

27:12

be part of it But the

27:14

way you had you Greeks you have one job.

27:16

You came here nine years ago. What are you

27:19

doing? What are you still doing here? The two

27:21

things I could see there are like it's the

27:23

the thing we open on It's

27:25

the two things we open on it's the plague

27:27

which is only been going on for like a

27:29

week and a half So like fair enough that

27:31

hasn't been going on forever. But maybe it's just

27:33

like the most recent Yeah, the

27:35

most recent thing that's that's bedeviled

27:38

these Greek heroes Yes, and

27:40

and to your to what you just said is like

27:42

the leaders bicker a lot and

27:44

they probably upset the gods regularly

27:47

There's probably lots of well We

27:50

don't you know, we gotta go get that

27:52

guy and that guy made somebody mad and

27:54

I don't know Everybody's

27:56

sleeping for some reason Yeah,

28:00

it is taken. I don't I wonder

28:02

at what year in this nine year

28:04

war everyone is just like I guess

28:06

we're gonna be here Because

28:10

they do reference that they do at one point I I

28:13

don't remember if it's in the Agamemnon

28:16

go home language or if it's in

28:18

the Odysseus Stay here

28:20

language because that's kind of what happens Where

28:24

they talk about like your families are at home

28:27

Your kids are growing up. What are

28:29

you doing here? Like let's

28:31

end this thing or go home

28:33

to them I don't I don't remember where that passage is

28:36

but that stood out to me as well Yeah,

28:40

this is like I don't know Agamemnon tells them all

28:42

to leave Odysseus like

28:44

powered by Athena runs around and is

28:46

like don't leave stop it and like

28:49

a smacking dudes with a magic stick

28:51

Mm-hmm Agamemnon's a magic stick and

28:54

he has And

28:56

then they have a big town hall meeting where at their site

28:58

use Complaints and he is like

29:01

every guy from every Sitcom

29:03

that has ever had a town hall meeting in

29:06

it. He's what is that ending up and yelling

29:08

stuff? Yep, what is that guy from Gilmore girls

29:10

that nobody likes Oh Kent? Kent

29:13

yeah, you kind of got that energy

29:16

a little bit of kit. Yeah, foul-mouthed

29:18

for CITES He's the ugliest man

29:20

who marched on Troy one of his legs is weak

29:22

the other twisted his shoulders hunched across his chest His

29:25

head was pointy and his sprouts of hair were

29:27

sparse It's like classic rolled

29:29

doll like this person is physically unattractive

29:31

And so you're expected to understand that

29:34

they are morally deficient in some way

29:36

also I believe Odysseus

29:38

says you are the you are the

29:40

very worst in my opinion of all

29:43

the mortal men who came to Troy

29:45

with Agamemnon son of Atria I Like

29:48

where I like where Wilson has

29:50

put the in my opinion there I don't know

29:52

if that's from the Greek, but it's you are

29:55

the very worst comma in my opinion comma is

29:58

Well, I mean other he doesn't want to get sued for

30:01

like defamation or whatever.

30:04

This is just my opinion. This isn't news. This

30:08

is me telling you my opinion. You're

30:10

the worst, ugliest guy who came with

30:12

us. No, that's funny. If you're delivering

30:14

this dramatically, which Wilson is very interested

30:16

in people doing, you could deliver it

30:18

as if Odysseus says, you are the

30:20

very worst. And then he like realizes

30:22

that he should couch it in my

30:24

opinion. He is. But

30:29

what is the, Odysseus tells

30:32

a story about like a snake

30:34

that has like- It's

30:37

like a prophecy where like- Yes. That

30:40

is about like a snake

30:42

and eight babies. A snake,

30:44

yeah, eats eight baby birds and then eats

30:47

the mother bird. And then

30:49

somebody points at the snake and is like,

30:51

that means the Greeks are gonna be in

30:53

Troy for nine years. And then in the

30:55

10th year, they're gonna raise up and they're gonna win this

30:57

thing. Now, do we think this

31:00

happened? I read that and was not

31:02

sure that it had happened and thought

31:04

that crafty Odysseus had maybe talked to

31:06

the- Yeah, I think we gotta consider

31:08

the source on this one. Odysseus is

31:10

not, I don't know that Odysseus

31:12

is on the level here with this one. He's kind

31:14

of saying what he needs to say to get what

31:16

he wants, which is what he always does. Yeah, for

31:18

real. I think that's his deal. Yeah. We

31:22

glided over the part at the beginning. We don't

31:24

need to- Oh, sure. Oh, no, the dream stuff?

31:26

A bunch of it. Yeah, just like Zeus. So

31:29

we end book one on Zeus and then in book two,

31:31

Zeus is like, okay, I'm gonna do what I want at

31:33

any point. And he sends Agamemnon

31:36

a dream. Yeah,

31:40

and this little chunk of text is repeated

31:42

verbatim three times. Which was kind of neat.

31:44

I didn't expect that. Yeah, just basically saying,

31:46

tell me as the arm-long haired Greeks at

31:48

once, now is the moment he can capture

31:50

the Trojan city with its spacious streets. The

31:52

deathless gods who live on Mount Olympus no

31:54

longer disagree with one another. Hera appealed to

31:56

them and changed their minds. Disaster has been

31:58

fastened to the Trojans. No, this is true.

32:01

No, none of it is true. It's all lies And

32:04

I think in the first dream Like

32:07

in the dream nester the old guy

32:10

the old wizens Yeah, the

32:12

dream the dream stood by

32:14

his head and took the form of nester

32:16

son of Nelius the elder who I Agamemnon

32:18

held in greatest honor. Yes the

32:21

horse lord and and

32:23

then Agamemnon said yo I had this cool dream had

32:25

the stream somebody told me that we all need to

32:28

go die because This

32:31

is is so in chaos

32:33

to Make the

32:35

bunch of the Greeks die and

32:37

punish Agamemnon because Achilles is mad

32:40

because Agamemnon So is

32:42

pretty good pretty good where we

32:44

are so far. Yeah, and so

32:46

everybody comes back everyone

32:49

has laughed at their sightings because

32:51

he stinks and They

32:54

have agreed to fight and

32:56

they are gonna like organize themselves into

32:59

like battalions based on where they've come from

33:01

and then the

33:03

poet says to

33:06

the muse What does

33:08

the poet say? The poet says

33:10

to the muse now tell me muses who have your

33:12

houses high on Mount Olympus for you are goddesses and

33:14

you are here And you know everything you see it

33:17

all while we only while while we can only listen

33:19

to the stories We have seen nothing and we do

33:21

not know who were the lords and leaders of the

33:23

Greeks I could not tell or name

33:25

the multitude not even if I had ten tongues ten

33:27

mouths a voice that never broke a heart of bronze

33:30

Had not the Olympian muses who are daughters of

33:32

Aegis Bering Zeus made me aware of how many

33:34

came to Troy I catalog only the captains and

33:36

the ships they brought. I love

33:38

ten tongues ten mouths. That's one of my favorite

33:40

lines that's what am I the while

33:43

we're talking about like ways to Say

33:45

the number is big my job My

33:48

favorite in this book is earlier

33:50

where Agamemnon is talking about how many more

33:52

Greeks there are than Trojans Okay,

33:55

and he says If

33:57

both sides the Greeks and Trojans could agree to

33:59

swear firm oath that offer sacrifice and count how

34:01

many Trojans lived beside their hearts and all of

34:03

us were grouped in sets of ten picking a

34:05

Trojan man for every group to pour our wine

34:07

then many groups would lack a server by so

34:09

much I say we Greeks outnumber all the Trojans

34:11

living here." So

34:14

even ten to one they wouldn't always

34:16

be that they still couldn't make that

34:18

ratio work. That restaurant would be backed

34:20

up. And

34:22

then we get the so this is called the catalog

34:24

of ships that's what it's known as like in

34:26

scholarly circles if you want to read more about

34:29

it. It's very

34:31

it's got a little bit of

34:33

like the sections of the Bible where people

34:35

just begat other people and they go on

34:37

like that for a while. It's got a

34:39

little bit of the Sir

34:42

Mix-a-Lot Jump On It song where he's just

34:44

naming cities where all his hoes live and

34:46

he's just you know he's just naming all those cities to

34:48

get like a response from people in

34:50

the audience who are like from the cities

34:52

that he's naming. Yes, because you could you

34:55

could imagine the poet you know

34:57

talking about what he's talking about

35:00

Fisbee where the pigeons flock, Plataea the

35:02

lush grass of hilly artists. When you're

35:04

performing the poem if you know

35:08

someone is from there you might play up

35:11

that section of the poem a little bit.

35:13

Yeah, Arne where rich vines grow and somebody

35:16

in the back is like oh

35:18

yeah, rich vines! Yo, I'm from

35:20

my CNA, the sturdy citadel from

35:22

wealthy Corin. The thing that's that

35:27

stuck out to me and how it is printed

35:29

on the page here so first

35:31

there are like approximately like

35:33

30 groups that

35:36

are broken out in the poem. There are a

35:38

bunch of like line breaks within this section and

35:40

if you treat each of them as a group

35:42

there's like almost 30 of them. So

35:46

in many of the transitions not all

35:48

of them but in many of them

35:52

Wilson has done like

35:54

a shared line. Yeah. Which in

35:56

Iamic Pentameter means you know you

35:58

have ten... little rhythmic

36:00

beats to a line. And

36:03

if you don't finish all

36:05

ten beats, but you want to start a

36:07

new thought, or you want to pass the

36:09

dialogue to another character, it's what's called a

36:11

shared line. So

36:14

we have Antipas

36:16

and Fidipas, the two sons of Thessalis, the

36:19

son of Heracles. With them came

36:21

thirty hollow ships, period. Now

36:23

from, which is still of the same

36:26

poetic line, Pelasian Argos

36:28

came the men of Aelis from

36:30

Pythia to... And she

36:32

does that a lot, where she

36:34

has these, and I think that's

36:36

probably, maybe it's part of the

36:39

original poem, I have no idea, but it

36:41

has this like feeling, this kind of

36:44

cascading feeling, where like the list kind

36:47

of propels itself forward. Each

36:49

new entry is not like

36:53

take a breath and think about the next thing,

36:55

it's like the poet is like looking around and

36:57

like, oh yeah, and those guys are there, and

36:59

oh, and those guys are there. Yeah, and that's

37:01

how it reads, even if the lines weren't split

37:03

up like that, it's very much like, and then

37:05

there is this, and then there is this, and

37:07

then there is this, and it's like one continuous

37:09

thought, basically. Yeah, it's cool. And

37:11

I had not remembered

37:13

that the Trojans also get their own

37:15

list, they don't get as many lists. So it's

37:17

much less impressive. Well, ten to one, you know,

37:19

whatever. Well, not even ten to one.

37:21

Yeah. Some tables will

37:23

lack a server, Craig. There are 1,186 ships

37:26

split between 46 captains.

37:32

Okay. That's what we're talking about. I did

37:34

not do the math on how many

37:36

dudes that is, because it just depends on how many

37:38

dudes you fit in a ship. Yeah. It's

37:41

possible you might have different styles of ship

37:43

from different places, which is kind of the

37:45

vibe here. Sure. Because like Achilles has his

37:47

mermaidant, like people have their own like dudes,

37:49

like they brought their specialty units, you

37:52

know. Yes, right. Spam them back at

37:54

the town center, and then they brought them all in the ship.

37:57

Did you have any part, because, okay, so Most

38:00

of it's just like dudes and ships, right? But then

38:02

every once in a while, spoken

38:06

to by the muse, the poet decides he

38:08

wants to share with us a little, like a

38:10

little factoid about this or that individual

38:13

person. Were there any of them

38:15

that you thought were really, really funny because I

38:17

got one? Oh, I don't know. I don't know.

38:20

I don't know. I

38:22

don't know that any, that I'd noted

38:24

any that were particularly funny. Let me share mine. I mean,

38:26

were there any that you liked then? Yeah, no, there's one

38:29

that I recognized. I've got one that I thought was funny,

38:31

but what else do you like? No, yes, I will get

38:33

mine out of the way because you have funny ones. The

38:37

one that I recognized

38:39

was from a Sophocles play

38:43

about a guy named Phylak Tedes. From

38:46

Eliboe and Nathone, rugged Olazan and Themesia

38:48

came men led by Phylak Tedes, skillful

38:50

with his bow in seven ships. In

38:53

each were 50 rowers, all talented at

38:55

archery and combat. But Phylak Tedes lay

38:57

in agony on Holy Lemnos where the

38:59

Greeks had left him. A deadly water

39:01

snake had wounded him. He lay there

39:03

suffering, but soon the Greeks beside their

39:06

ships would once again remember Lord Phylak

39:08

Tedes. And there's a little bit more about

39:10

that. That play is really cool. There's a

39:12

couple of different versions of it out there.

39:15

There's one by Seamus Haney called The

39:18

Curette Troy. And it's about like,

39:20

I don't know, this guy got

39:22

bit by a snake and they didn't

39:24

think that they could handle him crying so bad

39:26

on the boat. So they just left him there

39:28

and didn't bring him to the war. There's

39:32

a lot of modern reads about like

39:34

dealing with veterans and stuff that

39:36

make that play really interesting, but

39:39

also there's this magic bow, like

39:41

Hercules's bow or Heracles's bow is

39:44

on that island. And

39:46

Naptalamus has to go there and get it. It's

39:48

a cool play. So I

39:50

was like glad to see Phylak Tedes in

39:52

the list. What made you giggle? The

39:55

one I liked a lot was this guy, Damaris. Okay.

40:00

Sure. The Mayr's boasted that

40:02

he could even win against the Muses if they,

40:04

the daughters of the High King Zeus, the God

40:06

who bears the ages, sang against him. Enraged

40:09

they mutilated him and robbed him of godlike song

40:11

and forced him to forget the liar. That

40:18

rules. He's just lying.

40:23

And I like this for a couple reasons. One is

40:25

that we're getting this from the Muses, and so clearly

40:27

the Muses still have an accident. He likes to grind

40:29

with this guy and just want everyone to know that

40:31

they kicked his butt. But

40:34

then just like the punishment for what

40:36

he did is not to like strain on one island,

40:38

not to kill him, not to like physically hurt him

40:41

in some way. It's just like one

40:43

day he woke up and he didn't know how to play guitar

40:45

anymore. You're

40:47

like, you did it too good and you were too audacious

40:50

about it. Yeah, you

40:52

were rude and you did not

40:54

respect us even though you played a liar

40:56

by our, you know, it's our will that

40:58

you play the liar. We're the Muses. I

41:01

love it. Now if you forgot how

41:03

to play a guitar, you just could do it. Yeah,

41:08

it's a fun list and you're right. I think it gives

41:11

like the the poet or the

41:13

reader like fun opportunities for performance

41:15

to either like, you know, give

41:17

shout outs or to lift up

41:19

these individual stories. I

41:22

feel like you could, if you

41:24

were the contemporaneous poet, you might like add

41:26

a few if you thought people

41:28

might dig like this is a good spot to like riff, you

41:30

know, if the crowd is really on

41:33

your side. Yeah, yeah, or just depending

41:35

on where you're performing. Yeah, the poem.

41:37

Yeah, bust out your like, you know, your

41:40

your pencil tucky type five. You know,

41:42

if you're in the caskills or whatever.

41:46

And then as we said, Isis goes

41:48

and tells, well,

41:51

she pretends to be like one of Prime

41:53

Sons or something like that. And she tells.

41:56

It doesn't be Hector, doesn't she? Talk to

41:58

Hector because Hector is the one who's like. Oh,

42:01

yes, Hector who realized a goddess

42:03

had been speaking my prime. I'm

42:05

son polities. There you go. It's

42:07

with it sprinting. Yes Hector

42:11

who realized the goddess had been speaking is one

42:13

of my favorite lines that whole poem so far

42:15

And it's like oh, no, the Greeks are coming.

42:17

They're getting ready. We got to get ready We're

42:20

gonna go out and fight and I've got the we

42:22

got the catalog of boys. Yep Just

42:26

most of the things that sprung out to me

42:28

in the catalog of boys was just we get

42:30

some We do get one

42:32

little Snarky aside one brother

42:34

came to war dressing gold ornaments just like a

42:36

girl those bobbles did not save his life poor

42:38

fool Oh boy But

42:42

we also We get

42:44

I mean there are lots of little lines of

42:46

foreshadowing in this and I don't think you would

42:48

really even call them Foreshadowing

42:51

because I think the you know the listener

42:53

of this poem would know yeah the broad

42:55

strokes of what was what was coming So

42:57

you're not like trying to build suspense in

42:59

any meaningful way, but you just get little

43:01

bits like You know

43:04

we talk about Chromius and

43:06

animus a seer who could interpret birds But

43:08

augury could not protect him from his black

43:10

death and fate swift-footed lord Achilles hands killed

43:13

him in that same river Where he massacred

43:15

all those other Trojans so like

43:17

word several books from any

43:19

massacring? Yeah, and yet

43:22

But here's this one guy. Here's this one dude.

43:25

He's gonna get killed by Achilles

43:28

and also Achilles is gonna massacre a lot of other

43:31

Trojans. There's gonna be a river there. It's gonna be

43:33

a whole scene Well,

43:35

which is interesting to think about because so far

43:38

Achilles is only really mad at the Greeks Yeah,

43:41

so you got to figure out how that's gonna happen. Yeah

43:44

and the last like

43:47

patronymic or Epithet Epithet is

43:49

really the word I was looking for Because

43:52

patronymic is just the son of stuff Epithet

43:55

that I had not really remembered. I was

43:58

familiar with swift-footed Achilles But

44:01

the one that stood out to me in this

44:03

read is something like

44:05

his fate races after him,

44:07

or Achilles whose fate is

44:09

always running behind him or

44:11

something. Just the

44:14

various ways that the poem and then

44:16

Wilson's translation is like, yeah,

44:18

this guy is really

44:21

not far from the end of what he's here

44:23

to do. Yeah. And it's

44:26

coming for him. And so all of the

44:28

decisions he's making, you have

44:30

to think about the fact that he's not

44:34

going to get old. Something's

44:36

going to happen first. So

44:39

that stood out to me. Yeah,

44:42

that's book one and book two, Andrew. That's books one and two. I

44:45

don't really know what's going to happen

44:48

right away next because we just had a

44:50

big long list. I think there's a

44:52

little bit more exposition to come. But

44:56

there's probably going to be some funny stuff in there.

45:01

If I went back and read one of the

45:03

older Iliad translations that I've read before and I

45:05

was really reading it with my full brain and

45:07

trying to pay attention to it and reading it

45:10

with a highlighter, Henry wants to know why I

45:12

keep coloring in this book and if I could

45:14

let him color in it. That's

45:19

funny. Are you drawing lines? Henry.

45:24

Can you turn the page, please? I'm

45:30

sure I would notice funny parts in that

45:32

too. But

45:35

Wilson, I don't know. This

45:38

is my experience of her Odyssey too. I

45:41

just found it. I

45:43

was finding it easier to read, which made

45:45

it easier for me to pick

45:48

out little textured surfaces

45:50

among all the pros. If

45:52

you're just reading the catalog of ships, it's really

45:55

easy to treat it like a song in a

45:57

Tolkien novel. It is just there to be skimmed

45:59

and skipped. Yeah, totally,

46:01

totally, totally. Especially on like

46:03

subsequent readers, but there are

46:05

just, I don't know, there, I noticed

46:07

every little bit of variation from

46:10

the, you know, from the

46:12

list. It helps that the list,

46:14

it helps that the list is not uniform. Like

46:17

each item in the list is not uniform in length.

46:20

Like some passages are just

46:22

like, I don't know, Ajax had some

46:24

guys. Oh, here's the other Ajax, you

46:26

know, like it, it is

46:28

not, uh, here's 10

46:30

lines about each boat, which,

46:32

which does help. But yeah, I think you're

46:35

right. Wilson's writing in particular is just easier

46:37

to like, let me just like, you

46:39

know, kind of, you know, sit

46:42

down inside of this one chunk of the list and

46:44

see what's going on here. It's a little easier to

46:46

do. I hate when

46:48

I'm reading something old and I have to

46:50

like figure out why it's funny.

46:53

It's just so funny. This is one of the

46:55

hardest things about enjoying old things.

47:01

Yeah, that's, that's, you're not

47:03

going to get translations of Shakespeare really

47:05

per se. I mean,

47:08

I'm sure there are people who have tried

47:10

to go through it. There are large projects

47:12

where people have done similar things. Yes. But

47:14

yeah, like I both find it helpful and

47:16

super frustrating when you read those versions of

47:19

Shakespeare that have the like

47:21

annotations in line. Yeah. Yeah.

47:23

Yeah. And like, so they're like, they're like genius

47:25

lyrics. You can see, you can understand like all

47:27

the old time new references to like weird nobles

47:29

and whatever. Yeah. So you know why it's funny,

47:32

but it is, it's nice to read a thing

47:34

like this and just like, know why it's funny because

47:36

it is rendered in

47:38

a way that is funny. Yeah. For

47:41

real. That registers to me as a humor.

47:44

Here in our year, 2023. Well,

47:48

that's it. Thanks everybody for

47:50

listening to our first, to

47:53

our first episode of the Iliad proper with

47:55

the first two books in the book or

47:57

the poem, whatever. And

47:59

what do we say? at the end of

48:01

every episode of Stop

48:03

Homertime. See you next

48:06

time, dog face! Hey

48:17

everybody, welcome to Homertime!

48:19

My name is Craig, it's a hot...

48:21

My name's Andrew. I

48:25

was so excited about the Trojan War,

48:28

I forgot what order I say anything!

48:30

I mean this book is just also

48:32

really interested in telling you about people

48:34

and their names and what they're doing. My

48:37

name is Craig, lover of the book! That's

48:40

my epithet. My name is Andrew,

48:42

born of Zeus. I

48:45

sit good. I'm good,

48:47

I'm an accomplished sitter. The one who

48:49

sits well. This

48:52

is our mini podcast

48:55

within the podcast Overdue, a podcast

48:57

about the books you've been meaning

48:59

to read. We're here talking

49:01

about the Iliad a

49:05

few books at a time, typically two. Typically

49:07

two. This time again it's two. Last time

49:09

is books one and two, this time is

49:11

books three and four. Things

49:13

start to pop off in these

49:15

two? Yeah they do pop off! Just to

49:18

remind you in case you

49:20

just decided, let's start at episode

49:22

two of Stop Homertime. Last

49:25

time we met the Trojan War,

49:27

we just got our hands around

49:29

it. Just figured out

49:31

what's going on here. Yeah we met it, we

49:33

met the war. Achilles, swift-footed

49:37

warrior, big beautiful man, got

49:40

big mad. Yeah, cried

49:42

to his mommy. Yeah, cried to his

49:44

mommy after fighting with Agamemnon and he

49:46

cursed the Greeks and Zeus said, yeah

49:49

I'll suck it to him. And

49:52

the fighting started. Well

49:56

the fighting was going to start. The fighting was going to

49:58

start and then it didn't start. And then we We

50:00

got the then we got a long list of

50:02

ships and boys the catalog of ships and the

50:04

catalog of chariots and all the all the Ships

50:06

and the boys so we say that the fight

50:09

almost started But then it doesn't because what happens

50:11

in book three Craig gifts of the goddess gifts

50:13

of the goddess Let me give you a top-level

50:15

summary So you know what's going on spurred on

50:17

by the gods the Greeks and the Trojans are

50:20

getting ready for a good old-fashioned rumble as The

50:24

armies approach pretty boy Paris steps out

50:26

from the crowd attracting the attention of

50:28

the cuckold Menelaus Paris hides

50:30

of course until Trojan hero

50:32

Hector calls him a wuss After

50:35

which Paris agrees to duel Menelaus

50:37

one-on-one for Helen and I guess

50:40

the entire Trojan War. Yeah Honestly,

50:43

this seems like this seems to me like

50:46

a decent way to resolve it because it's you

50:48

get the impression that a lot of These guys

50:50

really don't want to be here. Yeah, just multiple

50:53

times throughout these books There's one or two

50:55

moments in this book in particular that feel

50:57

like why didn't we do this nine years

50:59

ago? Or how has a lot

51:02

of that not happened yet? And

51:05

I even I found one or two like

51:07

moments from Emily Wilson in her notes even

51:10

referencing like this is kind of a poetic

51:12

convention The

51:14

two boys hurl spears at one another and

51:17

Paris is almost in big trouble before

51:19

Aphrodite swoops in to protect him The

51:22

Greeks are mad about that but also

51:24

pretty sure that Menelaus one so

51:26

Agamemnon demands that they be treated

51:28

like The victors that's the

51:30

that's the whole thing a book three

51:32

there And that was

51:35

kind of been like this this truce called

51:37

like they swear these oaths which will be

51:39

back in the next book where

51:42

they're just gonna get together and sort of parlay and try to

51:44

figure out a way to Resolve

51:46

the Trojan War without everybody having to kill

51:48

everybody like what if one guy killed another

51:51

guy instead? Yes Because they're

51:53

the reason we're all here anyway. I

51:56

like the sequence at the top of this

51:58

book We're like Paris steps out kind

52:00

of peacock in a little bit. And

52:03

then Menelaus, friend of Aries,

52:05

which I thought was a fun epithet, he

52:08

approaches and Paris gets scared, right? And

52:11

I like all the stuff where Hector's like, what

52:13

are you doing, my guy?

52:15

Pathetic Paris, womanize or cheat,

52:18

you are the very best

52:20

at looking pretty. Oh, I wish

52:22

that you had never lived or died unmarried. That

52:24

would be far better than life as such an

52:26

object of contempt. He

52:28

says at one point that the Trojans

52:30

quote, would have dressed you in a

52:33

shirt of rocks for all the evils

52:35

you have perpetrated. Yeah. It

52:38

means death by stoning, but just shirt

52:40

of rocks is a really pretty.

52:42

Yeah, we'll talk a little bit at the end of

52:44

book four about some of the just the different ways

52:46

that Emily Wilson tells you that somebody dies. Yeah. I

52:48

mean, I guess Homer's telling us, but speaking

52:50

through the muse that is Emily Wilson. That is true.

52:52

And as you said

52:54

earlier, Andrew, everyone is excited about this

52:57

plan when Paris is like,

52:59

listen, okay,

53:01

I will duel him. It's

53:04

fine. I'll do it. And

53:07

I do just wonder why it took

53:09

nine years to

53:11

get here. Yeah. Now,

53:14

the one thing, one last

53:16

thing about this, this little Hector Paris exchange,

53:18

you talked about Hector yelling at Paris. We

53:21

didn't talk about what Paris says back to Hector,

53:23

which is like, yeah,

53:25

I'm pretty, but what

53:28

is gifts that glorious gifts that come from gods

53:30

that they themselves have given must not be thrown

53:32

away. Although no human chooses them willingly. Yeah. Listen,

53:34

the gods made me this pretty. And so I

53:37

just have to be a pretty boy. It's

53:39

so, it's very important because otherwise I'm offending

53:41

the gods. That's

53:44

the thing I was like, yeah, I ate your, your

53:47

lean pockets. And

53:49

it's because the gods wanted me to, they wanted

53:52

me to be full of this pepperoni energy. And

53:54

so they, they wanted me to eat your hot

53:56

pockets. And I didn't even put them in the

53:58

little, like the foil microwave sleeve. I just

54:01

ate them. Because I like it when there's a little cold, like

54:03

a little cold bit in the middle. This

54:05

reminds me of a

54:09

time in college, Andrew. Oh, is

54:11

this a Texas toast? It is. It's when

54:14

I came home from an acapella rehearsal and

54:16

found that many of my friends

54:18

were eating my Texas toast out of the

54:20

freezer and I don't think that they had

54:22

even heated any of it up.

54:24

I mean, it was a pack, if

54:27

you will, of like 20 and 21 year

54:30

olds, young men and applying heat

54:32

to food is not something that we did a lot.

54:35

And I do believe a similar

54:37

excuse was simply, it was there

54:39

for the taking. It was there

54:41

for the taking. And the gods made me

54:43

hungry and your toast was there and so

54:45

I didn't want to offend the gods. Who

54:47

are you to refuse a gift from the

54:49

gods, your gift being your hunger and my

54:51

Texas toast? Understandable. Yeah. Glorious gifts

54:53

that come from gods that they themselves have given

54:56

must not be thrown away, although no

54:58

human chooses them willingly. I did not willingly eat

55:00

that Texas toast, but probably Papa John's was close.

55:04

That's where we were. I

55:06

do like that this kind of pops off because

55:08

like both armies approach and Hector's

55:10

like, before any of us

55:12

fight, I have to yell at my dirtbag

55:14

brother for a second.

55:17

Yeah. Which is a fun way to

55:19

start any war. But

55:21

no, they agree to

55:24

this duel. They

55:26

do like a whole sacrifice about it.

55:28

This Greeks and Trojans were delighted. They hope

55:30

the agonizing war would end. Just throwing in

55:33

evidence that as a

55:35

body of people, the Greeks and Trojans

55:38

do not want to do this particularly.

55:41

And then we get this scene with

55:44

we move back into Troy

55:46

proper. Iris, the goddess who's been popping

55:49

in and out of Troy to like

55:51

deliver messages, goes and talks

55:53

to Helen and is like, yo, your boys are

55:55

gonna fight. And Helen's

55:57

like, man, I don't know that I

55:59

like either. guys I guess. Yeah, what's

56:01

your read on Helen? Because like most,

56:03

I mean there's a lot of self-loathing

56:06

from Helen in here. This

56:08

is our one, I think in these two

56:10

books, our one instance of dog face

56:12

is when Helen

56:14

is calling herself a dog face.

56:16

Yes, yes, yes. And she like

56:19

simultaneously seems to regret

56:21

leaving Menelaus, but also she does

56:23

boink Paris once after

56:25

Daddy like sweeps him

56:27

into her chambers and vice versa.

56:29

And in between that she kind

56:33

of argues with Aphrodite a little

56:35

bit and she's like, what are

56:37

you? She made Aphrodite mad. Yeah,

56:39

and Aphrodite is like, shut up,

56:42

I'm a god. Stop

56:44

complaining. So

56:46

Helen like, I don't know Helen. Subborn girl, you

56:48

must not make me angry or in my rage,

56:51

I will abandon you and start to loathe you

56:53

with as deep a passion as I have loved you

56:56

as my friend till now. Whoa. I shall devise a

56:58

strategy and make you loathe and abort by both the

57:00

Greeks and Trojans and you shall die a dreadful death.

57:02

So no, I mean no pressure though. Do what

57:07

you want. You do what you want girl boss.

57:09

Helen seems like she's in a tough spot to

57:12

put it lightly. Do you think

57:15

Aphrodite is a girl boss? Yeah. Definitely.

57:18

I think Aphrodite

57:20

likes to girl boss more than like

57:22

Athena does. Athena is just like, you

57:25

know, she doesn't she just does her

57:27

thing. I think

57:29

Aphrodite is a cool girl and Aphrodite

57:31

is a girl boss. But

57:34

she's one of the girl bosses who pulls

57:36

the ladder up behind her and doesn't help

57:38

other women. Yes. To get up

57:40

to the girl boss level. Yeah, definitely.

57:42

Can we do more like early

57:45

20th? Anyway,

57:49

it could continue. I mean, there's a lot of

57:51

God's gaslighting people here and

57:53

the Trojans are gatekeeping basically. Let's think about

57:55

that the whole time. So

58:01

Iris talks to Helen and is like this

58:04

duel is going to happen. Helen goes

58:06

to the Sky and Gates to

58:09

see what's going on. This

58:11

is referred to in Emily Wilson's

58:13

notes as the the

58:17

take a scopia, the

58:20

watching from the wall. The super scopia.

58:22

Yeah. And she finds

58:25

the first. Priam, King

58:27

of Troy. And

58:30

they say I'm

58:32

hanging out with some other guys and none of them

58:35

talk about how pretty Helen is, which

58:37

is a big deal. I think. And

58:42

then a bunch of

58:44

guys who have recently been in a sexual harassment

58:47

module like they're on high

58:49

alert for canceled. These

58:51

these old men of Troy

58:55

and probably was just kind of

58:57

like, hey, can you Helen? Who's

59:00

that guy out there? They play a game

59:02

of who's that guy out there, which

59:06

they're just identifying all the Greek soldiers

59:08

that are out on the battlefield. This

59:12

war has been going on for nine years,

59:14

nine years. And you don't like you can't

59:16

you don't know the Ajax is to look

59:18

at him like, come on, what is going

59:20

on here? I

59:22

don't think it's because he's like not with

59:25

it. I think

59:27

it is just an invention of the poem. This

59:30

is what Emily Wilson says. She says it's

59:32

so it's so yeah, it's really I

59:35

will say my thing. And then you can say Emily

59:37

Wilson's thing, just because my off

59:39

the dome thing is like it very.

59:43

Like purposely, purposefully begins

59:45

in the middle. But

59:47

then because it's still the

59:49

beginning of a story, you have to do all

59:51

this like beginning of a story stuff. Yes, she

59:53

says in her

59:55

in her like footnotes, it allows the poet

59:58

to present this late moment in the. war

1:00:00

as if it were the beginning and to stolen.

1:00:34

That'd be kind of strange. I

1:01:04

watched the start of season four of moon show tonight.

1:01:12

For all mankind on Apple

1:01:15

TV. And there's a scene with some

1:01:17

new characters in it and I had to turn

1:01:19

to Laura and be like do we know these people?

1:01:22

I don't know if I know

1:01:24

these people. Maybe that's

1:01:26

what pride is experiencing. That's interesting. That's

1:01:28

a good read. Okay.

1:01:32

The last thing in book three I highlighted

1:01:35

is again, this war

1:01:37

always seems, there are so

1:01:42

many little things that happen that

1:01:44

point to its futility

1:01:46

and pointlessness almost. Sure.

1:01:49

The pettiness of it. Indeed

1:01:51

the Trojans all detested Paris as if

1:01:53

he were black death. Yeah. Yeah.

1:01:57

Here's this guy, this idiot. whose

1:02:01

fault this substantially is. And

1:02:05

I'm not sure if everybody hates him because

1:02:07

of that, or they hated him

1:02:10

before, and this is just like, well Paris is

1:02:12

at it again. But

1:02:15

man, must suck to have

1:02:17

your city raised for a dude that you hate.

1:02:19

Yeah. Yeah. So, and that,

1:02:21

what I love about that line, I

1:02:24

bookmarked that line also, it comes out

1:02:26

of, so okay, so the fight happens.

1:02:28

Paris and Menelaus do a duel. I

1:02:32

love that they summon Prime to the battlefield

1:02:34

so that he can bless it and watch

1:02:36

or whatever, and he's like, no, too stressful,

1:02:38

have to leave. I

1:02:41

just learned these guys' names because it's too much for me. I

1:02:43

can't, no, can't do it. I already did something today. Agamemnon

1:02:46

lays out the terms, there's a

1:02:48

sacrifice to the gods, they draw

1:02:50

lots, which is fun. Emily

1:02:54

Wilson said it's probably like sticks

1:02:56

or rocks inside of a

1:02:59

helmet, and one of them

1:03:01

is notched and one of them isn't, and

1:03:03

that's how you determine who wins.

1:03:06

So they shake a helmet and then a rock falls

1:03:08

out, and that means that Paris gets to throw his

1:03:10

spear first. They

1:03:12

exchange spear throws, Paris

1:03:15

is, I mean he hits

1:03:17

Menelaus' shield, but nothing happens. Menelaus

1:03:19

slightly wounds Paris but doesn't get him.

1:03:22

His sword shatters on Paris' helmet,

1:03:24

which is I guess a

1:03:26

sign that Zeus has forsaken him or

1:03:29

something. So he's trying to- It doesn't

1:03:31

have anything to do with eighth century

1:03:33

BC metallurgy. No, fair enough. Because Zeus

1:03:35

has forsaken you. And

1:03:38

so he's dragging Paris around by his

1:03:40

helmet, Aphrodite swoops in, snaps the helmet

1:03:42

strap so that that doesn't work anymore,

1:03:44

and then whisks

1:03:47

Paris away. He

1:03:50

covers him in mist so the Greeks don't know where

1:03:52

he is, whisks him away to Helen

1:03:55

where Helen calls him a coward. He's like,

1:03:57

no, you don't understand. Yeah,

1:03:59

sure. but you don't understand Let's

1:04:01

Bone, they do. They do. And

1:04:06

that mist is there, and

1:04:09

that's when, Menelaus can't find him,

1:04:11

and the poet says something like, the

1:04:13

Trojans aren't hiding him, and

1:04:16

they wouldn't because they hate him, and that's

1:04:18

where the Black Death Line comes in, which

1:04:20

is great. And then

1:04:23

the book ends with Agamemnon being like, all

1:04:25

right, well, Menelaus clearly

1:04:27

won this duel, so

1:04:30

you give up

1:04:32

Helen plus interest, all

1:04:35

the spoils. Oh, okay, I was

1:04:37

thinking like, what is it, like 2.3% women compounded monthly?

1:04:42

Uh-huh. And

1:04:44

the quote I liked is, the Greeks

1:04:47

approved the words of Agamemnon. Yeah.

1:04:50

The Greeks will remember this. Yeah. So

1:04:53

that's book three. Book four, Andrew Hitman. There's

1:04:57

a joke in both of the Simpsons and

1:04:59

Futurama, where

1:05:01

Homer or

1:05:04

Bender will say something, and

1:05:06

then they will try to simulate

1:05:08

murmuring, where

1:05:12

they'll be like, yeah, Homer's

1:05:14

right. And

1:05:17

when I read the Greeks approve the

1:05:19

words of Agamemnon, I see Agamemnon being

1:05:21

like, oh yeah, we should listen

1:05:23

to Agamemnon. Yeah, he's

1:05:26

great. And

1:05:28

then pans over and it's just Agamemnon. Yeah,

1:05:30

it's just Agamemnon behind a shoe. All

1:05:35

right, book four, First Blood. First,

1:05:37

whoa, Rambo. Yeah, we're getting

1:05:39

into it. All right,

1:05:41

the gods are all chilling and observing the scene

1:05:43

below. They briefly discuss whether they should allow the

1:05:45

Greeks and Trojans to make peace, but

1:05:48

Hera takes Umbridge because she has worked

1:05:50

really, really hard on destroying Troy. And

1:05:52

it would be really mean if they

1:05:54

didn't let her do that. Doctor! So

1:05:58

Athena goes down and gets some idiot to fire. arrow

1:06:00

at Menelaus which doesn't kill him

1:06:02

but does injure him and inflames

1:06:04

hostilities because the

1:06:06

Greeks all think the Trojans have broken

1:06:08

their oaths, like the oaths of peace

1:06:10

they all swore to do this parlay.

1:06:13

Before the duel, yeah. Greeks

1:06:15

again, as in I think book two, are

1:06:17

not thrilled about the prospect of resuming fighting

1:06:19

but Agamemnon goes around and yells at everybody

1:06:21

really good until they're ready to fight. We

1:06:24

kind of get a sequence of Agamemnon walking

1:06:26

around sort of whipping people up. Just

1:06:28

nagging people. Just nagging a lot of

1:06:30

people, yeah. He checks in with like

1:06:32

a few specific Greek leaders. He

1:06:35

gets into a little like a bit of

1:06:37

sniping with Odysseus briefly but then walks

1:06:40

away before he can escalate to Agamemnon.

1:06:44

And the Greeks eventually

1:06:47

start marching. They marched in total silence because

1:06:49

they were so frightened of their leaders was

1:06:51

the line that I liked a lot. And

1:06:53

then almost immediately after that,

1:06:56

by contrast, we see a louder,

1:06:58

like messier Trojan horse which is

1:07:00

not unify, Trojan host. Whoa.

1:07:03

Got eight words after Trojan. That horse

1:07:05

is not up here. No,

1:07:07

the horse is not in the book. It's not in the book. We

1:07:10

see a messier, louder Trojan host which is

1:07:12

not there specifically

1:07:15

called out for not being unified by

1:07:17

a common tongue or accent or dialect.

1:07:19

Just kind of like, even

1:07:21

though the Greeks are from all over the

1:07:23

place, it's still like they're more of a

1:07:26

unified front than the Trojans are. Wilson called

1:07:28

that out in her notes being like, and

1:07:31

yet we also know that the poem

1:07:33

is this mishmash of Greek yada

1:07:36

yada yada. And we also know like in book

1:07:38

three, they're like swearing oaths to the

1:07:40

same gods. They don't even have like

1:07:42

a different pantheon or anything. And

1:07:45

then the two armies meet and

1:07:47

boy, does it get messy pretty

1:07:49

quick. It does get messy. That's

1:07:51

pretty quick. That is book four,

1:07:54

First Blood. What did

1:07:56

you think of this Olympus scene? It's kind of

1:07:58

messed up. I

1:08:00

think all the Olympus stuff is

1:08:02

so funny, honestly. It's so

1:08:05

wild! It's

1:08:07

so busted. Like, it... the... what is

1:08:09

it? Hera... you're the very worst of

1:08:11

all the children. So

1:08:14

what Zeus has done... And maybe he's being

1:08:16

genuine, maybe he's not. Because Zeus is a

1:08:18

tricky guy himself. Yes, he is. And

1:08:21

Hera is always scolding him. You

1:08:23

know, they've got this relationship that

1:08:26

we've established. He's very honeymoon-er-ish. And...

1:08:32

Zeus says, Shall

1:08:34

we rouse up terrible war and bitter strife again, or

1:08:37

shall we reconcile the war inside? And Hera says,

1:08:40

You're the very worst of all the children of

1:08:42

our father, Cronus. What have you said? How could

1:08:44

you make my labor useless, a pointless struggle to

1:08:46

no end? What about all my hard work, all

1:08:48

my sweat? I drove my chariot horses to exhaustion,

1:08:51

gathering this great army to bring ruin to Priam

1:08:53

and his children. Well, go on, do it. But

1:08:55

not a single other god will speak in favor

1:08:57

of your choices. God. Everyone will

1:08:59

think you're stupid if you don't let me destroy

1:09:02

this city and all the people in it. This

1:09:04

is a calm marriage. I know we talked

1:09:06

about it last episode, but like, every time.

1:09:09

It's got such high stakes. Yeah. You

1:09:12

know, we're in a 90s,

1:09:14

like, married with children

1:09:16

kind of situation. It would be about leaving the toilet

1:09:18

seat up, and

1:09:21

here it's about destroying a city full

1:09:23

of people. And her argument is that

1:09:25

she is pot committed. Yeah.

1:09:27

Like, she has already expended so much energy.

1:09:29

She's done a lot of work. And, Hera,

1:09:31

this is a sunk cost fallacy, by the

1:09:33

way. Yeah, well, fair enough. And

1:09:36

Zeus's response is okay. She

1:09:38

probably would not enjoy my...

1:09:40

No. ...implying

1:09:43

that she has fallacy. She would

1:09:45

turn you into, like, a toadstool

1:09:47

or something. Yeah.

1:09:51

And Zeus's response is basically,

1:09:54

okay, fine. But next

1:09:56

time I want to kill a city that you

1:09:58

love, you gotta shut up. Let me

1:10:01

do it. So

1:10:03

let us compromise on these decisions, he said.

1:10:07

And they're

1:10:09

both basically fine with that. She's like,

1:10:12

yeah, I find that agreeable. That's okay. Yeah.

1:10:14

So they're going to send Athena down to

1:10:16

mess with people. Did this stand out

1:10:18

to you, Andrew? And I don't

1:10:20

know the poem well enough to know if this

1:10:23

is a choice of Wilson's or

1:10:25

if it is just the thing

1:10:28

itself is when. Um,

1:10:30

Hera says, now quickly send Athena to

1:10:33

the field of dreadful carnage. She must

1:10:35

try to make the Trojans violate the

1:10:37

sacred Odes. Let them initiate hostilities against

1:10:39

the arrogant Greeks. And

1:10:41

then Zeus is like, okay, I will do that.

1:10:44

And he turns to Athena and he

1:10:46

says, hurry to the armies and join the

1:10:48

Greeks and Trojans. Try to make the Trojans

1:10:50

violate the sacred Odes. Let them initiate hostilities

1:10:52

against the arrogant Greeks. It reminds me of

1:10:55

the like very purposeful repetitions

1:10:57

from I think book two.

1:10:59

Yeah, with the dream stuff.

1:11:02

With the dream stuff. And I just,

1:11:04

I'm fascinated by this. She, I mean,

1:11:06

she talks a little in the

1:11:09

translator's note, right, about repetition

1:11:11

and how to

1:11:13

a modern reader repetition

1:11:16

can sort of read like, well, somebody doesn't know

1:11:18

how to use a thesaurus, do they? It's

1:11:22

not encouraged necessarily to repeat a word, but

1:11:24

if you're thinking of it as a spoken

1:11:27

poem and especially as a spoken

1:11:29

poem where probably, I mean,

1:11:31

I gotta imagine there's a little bit of vamping

1:11:34

in this thing if you're reading it out loud

1:11:36

from memory. Like if you can have

1:11:38

little chunks of it that you can kind of

1:11:41

repeat to draw people's attention to something, you

1:11:43

know. That's true. It

1:11:46

lends it importance. And to

1:11:48

that end, I'm struck by

1:11:50

the fact that the two times we've encountered it,

1:11:52

it has been like gods

1:11:55

speaking. Specifically Zeus telling people to

1:11:57

do stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:12:00

There is something to the repetition lending

1:12:02

power to the gods thing. That's interesting.

1:12:04

Okay So

1:12:07

this is probably my favorite my favorite line

1:12:09

in this book is the next thing that

1:12:11

happens is when with panders with panders And

1:12:13

Athena goes down. Yeah, I was like, hey

1:12:16

Why don't you shoot an arrow at

1:12:18

Malayas? Yeah, I think that'd go great

1:12:20

Uh-huh, so spoke Athena and her words

1:12:22

persuaded the mindless mind of panders. Yeah

1:12:25

It's the best line! It's really

1:12:27

great. I mean, I didn't think I

1:12:30

would find a line I liked more

1:12:32

than dog face, but mindless mind Yeah,

1:12:36

that implies a sort of a Lunk-headed.

1:12:39

Yep beef

1:12:41

beefy boy who doesn't really Who

1:12:44

is particularly easily persuaded to do

1:12:46

this stupid stupid thing in her

1:12:48

footnote She says that this word

1:12:50

play is based on the Greek

1:12:54

word play where Frinnay

1:12:57

or frinnay Mean

1:12:59

like organs of sense. P H R

1:13:01

E N A I just

1:13:03

like, you know your own faculties Mm-hmm, and

1:13:06

then there's a word a phronos meaning foolish

1:13:08

or lacking in for nigh And those are

1:13:10

the things in the poem. So she's like,

1:13:12

well, I can just say mindless mind Like

1:13:15

really sick big and hilarious

1:13:18

Mm-hmm So

1:13:21

the arrow wounds Menelaus, but it

1:13:23

does kind of a magic bullet thing Yeah,

1:13:26

Athena goes and like kind of protects him. She's like,

1:13:28

okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna send it through his belt

1:13:31

buckle I'm gonna send it through his letter belt I'm

1:13:34

gonna make it so it doesn't go in all the way But

1:13:36

I am gonna make it so it makes

1:13:38

him give blood all over the place and makes

1:13:40

all the Greeks really upset Especially

1:13:42

Agamemnon. Yes, the

1:13:45

thing that strikes me about this passage This

1:13:47

is book is page 80 in

1:13:50

the in the printed edition line

1:13:53

somewhere in the 160s Is

1:13:56

that this is all in the second person to Menelaus?

1:14:00

catch that? So

1:14:02

she said so the the arrow gets

1:14:05

thrown or shot

1:14:07

rather twanged and the

1:14:10

poet says but Menelaus you were not forgotten

1:14:12

by the deathless gods. Athena first the one

1:14:14

who hunts for spoils. The child of Zeus

1:14:17

stood right in front of you protecting you

1:14:19

against the piercing arrow and then it describes

1:14:22

you know how she allowed the magic arrow to

1:14:24

do its thing. She brushed it brushed it

1:14:26

from his skin as light as a gesture as when a

1:14:28

mother strokes away a

1:14:31

fly to keep it from her

1:14:33

baby sweetly sleeping. And that's

1:14:35

something we get a lot in this this book that

1:14:37

we can talk more about once the death stuff starts

1:14:39

is like every once in a while you will just

1:14:41

like break for an extended metaphor that is yep that

1:14:45

has nothing to do with I mean yeah

1:14:48

just it doesn't it doesn't yeah

1:14:50

yeah and then like after

1:14:52

it describes where this arrow goes it does like

1:14:55

you know it doesn't actually hit him in the chest

1:14:57

it hits him in like the hip in a way

1:14:59

that doesn't really make sense and

1:15:03

then it says Menelaus so were

1:15:05

your handsome thighs all stained with

1:15:07

blood so were your handsome calves

1:15:10

and shapely ankles love shapely ankles.

1:15:12

My shapely ankles. If anything like

1:15:16

this ever happens to me I

1:15:18

need you to run over like if I'm

1:15:20

like bleeding out in the street because somebody

1:15:23

shot an arrow at me I need you to

1:15:25

run over and be like there's blood on your

1:15:27

shapely ankles. My dear friend. So

1:15:31

Wilson says she

1:15:33

says that in the Odyssey there is

1:15:35

only one passage that is

1:15:37

written in the second person it's

1:15:39

to Yamais the swine herd. Ah

1:15:41

yes yes yes. And that in the

1:15:44

Iliad it is largely confined

1:15:46

to characters like Menelaus

1:15:48

and Patroclus she

1:15:51

says that some scholarship is like yada

1:15:53

yada what does it matter. Alternatively you

1:15:55

could say that it is

1:15:57

about it is typically reserved for characters.

1:16:00

who are not like the

1:16:02

main characters in the story.

1:16:04

Not the guy, but they're like emotionally resonant

1:16:06

for the guy. Like Menelaus

1:16:09

relative to like Paris or

1:16:11

Agamemnon, Patroclus relative to Achilles.

1:16:14

And so like the poet

1:16:16

kind of brings those characters

1:16:18

closer to themselves and

1:16:20

to the listener by

1:16:24

using this second person thing. Which is kinda

1:16:26

interesting. Yeah, and I've got a, yeah. It's

1:16:29

always hard to know, especially with something

1:16:32

that comes down to us from so far, like

1:16:35

from so long ago that

1:16:37

sometimes, even putting aside

1:16:39

like the authorship question and like anachronisms that

1:16:41

are already kinda built into the poem, like

1:16:44

what is like transcription error on the

1:16:46

part of some scribe? Like you know

1:16:48

what? Yeah, sure. I know

1:16:51

that Wilson said in

1:16:54

the intro and in her translators, like

1:16:56

that's a thing that she considered

1:16:58

and it's a thing that scholars consider

1:17:01

when thinking about what the canonical Greek

1:17:03

version of the poem is. Oh yeah.

1:17:05

Yeah, it's always so hard to read

1:17:07

intent into things. I like to

1:17:09

do it. I like that read of this, but I

1:17:12

can also, I can

1:17:15

sympathize with you if you're just like, yeah, I

1:17:17

mean, how much, how purposeful is this really? I

1:17:19

don't know. Yeah, the thing that strikes me is

1:17:21

she is also, as she says in her translator

1:17:24

note, like someone who likes reading

1:17:26

this out loud and performing it. So

1:17:28

if it's different, like you gotta make

1:17:30

a choice. Like that is what is

1:17:32

interesting about it to me as a

1:17:34

text and yeah, where it comes

1:17:37

from, who the heck knows? Agamemnon

1:17:39

gives this weird speech where he's like, Menelaus, yo,

1:17:41

don't die or I'll be so sad. I'll give

1:17:43

up and I'll go home. What

1:17:45

was that about? I guess. There

1:17:48

gotta be at least a couple of Greeks in

1:17:51

the back of the crowd being like, yeah, maybe

1:17:53

you can die. Maybe Melis

1:17:55

could die. Then

1:17:58

I get to go home. And then there's an extended sequence. were

1:18:00

they summon a doctor? Yes. M'kayin?

1:18:03

And then this is another

1:18:05

little bit of repetition I think,

1:18:07

right? Like glory for him but pain and

1:18:09

grief for us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm talking

1:18:11

about the person

1:18:13

who shot Menelaus, yeah, glory

1:18:15

for him and pain and grief for us because Menelaus

1:18:18

is bleeding all over

1:18:20

his ankles over here. He's gonna be

1:18:22

fine. Let's be clear. Yeah, because

1:18:24

the doctor comes over and puts his mouth

1:18:26

on an open wound and shucks

1:18:28

all the blood out. So

1:18:31

gross. Yeah.

1:18:34

And to me it was kind of wild that

1:18:36

like it

1:18:39

didn't just immediately devolve

1:18:41

into fighting right there.

1:18:43

Yeah, you got it, you got a route,

1:18:45

I mean everybody had been, yeah, they

1:18:47

swore these oaths, they're like well maybe, maybe just

1:18:49

these two guys have to fight so

1:18:52

you gotta, you gotta whip them back up

1:18:54

into a frenzy again. But

1:18:56

when he saw men shirking from the danger of

1:18:59

hateful war he scolded them in anger. You Greeks

1:19:01

are a disgrace, you are all talk. Why are

1:19:03

you not ashamed? Why are you standing bewildered? Just

1:19:05

like fawns when they get tired from running far

1:19:07

across the plane and stop and none of them

1:19:10

has any driver courage inside her heart just so

1:19:12

you stand there stunned not fighting. Really

1:19:17

harsh words. Harsh words. And then yes as

1:19:20

you said earlier he goes Greek by Greek,

1:19:23

talks to the two Ajaxes, which

1:19:27

I know will come up, I know Ajax

1:19:30

will factor into this poem, I don't know

1:19:32

the Ajax story super well. I don't know

1:19:34

it super well either, I know Ajax mainly

1:19:36

because if you play the Greeks

1:19:38

in the video game Age of Mythology he's one

1:19:40

of the hero units but I don't know which

1:19:42

one it is, I don't know which one of

1:19:44

the Ajaxes that it is. Okay. I

1:19:47

think it's probably the big one but I just I'm

1:19:49

not sure. I do like we

1:19:51

got to check in with Nestor the old

1:19:53

guy I just love him as a 2500

1:19:56

year old the old old

1:20:00

guy in the troop troop probably do probably

1:20:02

44 years old I I

1:20:07

I Agamemnon says nester old soldier

1:20:09

how I wish your strength of body

1:20:11

could still match your vigorous mind But

1:20:14

age the equalizer wears you down I wish

1:20:16

some other man was weak like you and

1:20:18

you could still take part with younger men

1:20:21

and then Nester

1:20:23

says You know the gods do

1:20:25

not give everything at once to humans then I

1:20:27

was young now old wait now old age weighs

1:20:29

me Down, but I will still accompany the horsemen

1:20:31

and give them orders and convey advice This

1:20:34

is the privilege of age my juniors confident

1:20:36

in their strength will be the ones to

1:20:38

hold and hurl their spears So

1:20:41

he just gets to be the guy who

1:20:43

tells other people what happened in other

1:20:45

fights, and maybe that's you know

1:20:48

Learn something from it. Yeah, the one thing

1:20:50

in this sequence Before the

1:20:52

like the fighting really breaks out and before

1:20:54

like the a little yeah, yeah adiCius bit

1:20:56

that that struck me was um So

1:21:00

he's talking he's talking to nester, and he's

1:21:02

talking specifically about like the composition of nesters

1:21:04

forces So nester

1:21:06

has the cavalry in front He

1:21:09

has the infantry to guard the rear And

1:21:12

he drove the commoners into the middle so reluctant

1:21:15

fighters would be compelled to fight against their will

1:21:17

yeah Oh boy, you know you got you got you

1:21:19

get this big catalog of ships You got like 1100

1:21:22

ships up in the sky And you got fill

1:21:24

all these ships with dudes and not all these

1:21:27

dudes are like enthusiastic soldiers So what

1:21:29

do you do is you put them in a place where they have

1:21:31

to fight yep? Because fight or

1:21:33

flight will kick in and they can't

1:21:35

fly because they're surrounded by horse boys

1:21:37

and like trained infantry Love

1:21:42

love the idea that there's just hundreds of

1:21:45

just dudes They're

1:21:48

just trying to be dudes

1:21:50

just guys in Hawaiian

1:21:53

shirts Carrying a

1:21:55

stick just getting ready to fight

1:21:57

like they don't know what they're doing. That's all

1:21:59

yeah all these level one guys who

1:22:01

just started out from opening town in their

1:22:03

life, you know, and

1:22:06

you've got one leather

1:22:09

shield and a crude

1:22:11

club and you haven't found

1:22:14

any weapon or armor shops yet and you just

1:22:16

got to go out and fight a war like

1:22:18

that. Well you brought up Age of Mythologies that

1:22:20

reminds me of like, well I mean I guess

1:22:22

I'm gonna go invade somebody, who do I have?

1:22:24

A bunch of townspeople I guess. Yeah. Bring them

1:22:26

with me. It's a villager rush for the treasure

1:22:28

war. Yeah, villager rush. Nestor

1:22:32

is the expert on it. Then

1:22:35

the fighting pops off and it

1:22:37

is um... It's pretty intense. It's

1:22:39

pretty intense. What stuck out to

1:22:41

you in the fighting, Andrew? I

1:22:44

just kept like taking note of

1:22:46

like something that as

1:22:50

the as the fighting gets started,

1:22:52

usually when you are talking about

1:22:55

gods, you know, they've got the familiar names. Oh

1:22:57

yeah. Yes, yes, yes. And here we've got

1:22:59

a section with sort

1:23:02

of personified emotions. Among

1:23:05

them all were went terror, panic, and

1:23:07

insatiable conflict. These are all capped. Who

1:23:10

is the sister and companion of murderous Aries. First

1:23:12

she swells a little then grows until her head

1:23:14

can touch the sky as she's traveling across the

1:23:16

earth. So now she hurled belligerents

1:23:18

among the throng of warriors and walked among them

1:23:20

increasing the men's screams and cries of pain. So

1:23:23

not even like kind

1:23:25

of personified insofar as she's like

1:23:28

growing and walking and like doing that

1:23:30

kind of stuff, but it's really... You

1:23:34

don't see, I don't think, conflict

1:23:37

like up in Olympus, like

1:23:39

hanging out and like watching

1:23:43

Zeus and Hera fight over stuff.

1:23:46

This is something that's

1:23:48

been like created by the emotions on

1:23:50

the battlefield almost. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

1:23:53

to me it immediately just feels like

1:23:55

a smoke monster just flying around like

1:23:57

making men feel... Well, okay. I mean...

1:24:00

That's not what it is, but it is not a

1:24:04

to your point I don't I don't picture it

1:24:06

as a hot

1:24:08

God on Olympus No,

1:24:10

I picture it as a vibe sweeping over people.

1:24:12

Yeah, I don't really think of a conflict is

1:24:14

like a big step on me lady who is

1:24:18

walking among the Greeks No

1:24:24

Not a step on me lady. Yes

1:24:26

step on my neck. Oh my vegetable

1:24:28

conflict goodness sister in

1:24:30

companion a murderous area you

1:24:33

know The

1:24:35

earth was flooded with blood as when

1:24:37

two opposing mountains from mighty springs to

1:24:39

river torrents swollen by winter storms flow

1:24:41

down the Deep ravines and clash collide

1:24:43

and mingle in the gorge creating an

1:24:46

enormous flood the shepherd high on the

1:24:48

hilltops Here's the waters roar such was

1:24:50

the noise of fighting and of screaming

1:24:52

as the two as those two armies

1:24:54

met Yeah Woof

1:24:57

you go from like what are these people

1:25:00

been doing for nine years to oh, it's

1:25:02

like rivers of blood Yeah blowing

1:25:04

down from mountains how many people are dying

1:25:06

and then the poem is like let's tell

1:25:08

you about Individual guys that died and I'd

1:25:11

like we don't need to go

1:25:13

completely blow by blow But it's like, you know

1:25:16

Imagine how guys are getting stabbed in

1:25:18

the head and whatnot. It's very visceral

1:25:20

both physically and emotionally like in terms

1:25:22

of physics You've got the one guy

1:25:26

Who Odysseus kills cuz yes, he

1:25:28

killed Odysseus his friend Odysseus enraged

1:25:30

about his comrade speared one

1:25:32

side of his forehead and the tip

1:25:34

of the bronze poked right out through

1:25:36

the other temple darkness obscured his eyes

1:25:38

Mm-hmm, and then emotionally like I

1:25:41

mean similar issues like But

1:25:44

he would never pay his loving parents back

1:25:46

for taking care of him his life was

1:25:48

short. Yep. Whoops. Whoops Pretty

1:25:52

bad. Yeah Like

1:25:55

darkness darkness covered his eyes

1:25:58

his body was undone his spirit left him

1:26:03

just the different little way like you were

1:26:05

going to experience

1:26:07

a lot of individual dudes dying

1:26:10

and so I always like

1:26:12

it always kind of catches me how like what is

1:26:14

repeated what is not like how do you how do

1:26:16

you say that over

1:26:18

and over again yep yeah and

1:26:21

then and then Apollo steps in because

1:26:23

like the Trojans start

1:26:25

to break a little bit like they they

1:26:27

may roll a little bad on their Constitution

1:26:30

save and Apollo

1:26:32

is like hey Trojan horsemen come do not

1:26:34

yield the bow to the Greeks their bodies

1:26:36

are not made of stone or iron when

1:26:38

they are struck the bronze cuts through their

1:26:40

flesh also remember that Achilles son

1:26:43

of fetus with the finely braided hair is

1:26:45

absent from the fighting he is sitting beside

1:26:47

the ships and ripening his anger to cause

1:26:50

more heart heart sickness I think only mention

1:26:52

of Achilles in this yeah two books for

1:26:54

like I don't remember I think so I

1:26:56

think maybe he's mentioned a book to our

1:26:59

remember but like yeah the

1:27:01

guy the the guy the poem is about

1:27:03

yep though in here

1:27:05

like here the poem is about him in

1:27:08

so far is it's about why

1:27:10

he's not here which is big man he is still

1:27:13

about the anger of Achilles and what it you know

1:27:15

what it has oh yeah he prayed

1:27:18

to the gods and now they are doing it

1:27:20

yeah he made you know and then

1:27:23

so you know some more people

1:27:25

die and what

1:27:28

there's one line was oh this is

1:27:30

the end of the book and

1:27:33

all around them many more were killed now

1:27:36

nobody could think the fighting light not

1:27:38

even one who somersaulted through it unscathed

1:27:40

unwounded by the sharp bronze weapons if

1:27:42

great Athena took him by hand protecting

1:27:46

him from the barrage of arrows so

1:27:48

many Greeks and Trojans on that day lay

1:27:50

face down in the dust beside each other

1:27:54

boom boom and then wound

1:27:58

wound this but Oh,

1:28:00

Unwounded? Yeah, Unwounded. Oh,

1:28:03

yang! I said Unwounded. You

1:28:06

want to take that? You want to take that? Now

1:28:08

nobody could think the Fighting Light, not even

1:28:10

one who somersaulted through it unscathed, Unwounded by

1:28:12

the Sharp Bronze weapons. Whoopsie

1:28:15

doodle! Unwounded.

1:28:17

Unwounds. I

1:28:20

will own saying Unwounded. That is fine.

1:28:22

I was giving you an opportunity to

1:28:24

edit it out of the show, but

1:28:26

that's... No, I said it out loud.

1:28:29

With my mouth. The

1:28:31

same mouth that I would use to praise

1:28:33

the muse. You know what? You know what?

1:28:37

Bet it's happened before to some Greek

1:28:39

guy who was reading this poem. You

1:28:41

know. And everybody's sitting around at the

1:28:43

tables or whatever and being like, Did

1:28:45

he just say Unwounded? This

1:28:48

guy sucks. That's how you know that

1:28:50

there must have been multiple poets. Because

1:28:52

a few of them just never got

1:28:54

hired again because they said Unwounded. Yeah,

1:28:57

it's like, okay, can we book the

1:28:59

poet from the good place or do

1:29:01

we gotta go to Poet City to

1:29:03

hire some teenager? Okay,

1:29:08

so we're at book four. How are

1:29:11

you feeling, Andrew? We're

1:29:13

getting into it. We're

1:29:16

getting into the fighting part. But

1:29:19

I know we go back to Achilles.

1:29:21

I know Achilles and Patroclus become a big

1:29:24

thing. I know we get

1:29:26

more of Hector. I know we

1:29:28

spend most of the book with these other

1:29:30

individual guys. But what I do

1:29:32

not remember is the order in which these

1:29:34

things happen and how much of the book

1:29:36

actually it is. I

1:29:39

think this happened to us a lot in The Odyssey. Parts

1:29:43

of the story have been

1:29:45

more absorbed into the canon than others and

1:29:47

parts of them you just remember better than

1:29:49

others. And so you misremembered

1:29:51

when they happen and how big a part of

1:29:54

the story they were. I'm curious to encounter

1:29:56

the moments I'm familiar with and put

1:29:59

them back. into context. Yeah, and

1:30:01

these two books book

1:30:06

three is like two pretty

1:30:09

well-known characters Paris and Menelaus have a

1:30:11

duel and then book four is like

1:30:13

a bunch of guys you've never heard

1:30:16

of die yeah and we're

1:30:18

gonna talk to you about them but they all die

1:30:22

and so I'm interested to move into a

1:30:24

phase of the of the poem where you

1:30:26

know some some you know

1:30:29

people who are in the opening

1:30:31

credits maybe actually

1:30:34

have some things happen to them and

1:30:37

yeah if you're a main character and you die to

1:30:40

your comrades come and strip your

1:30:42

plot armor off and take that back

1:30:44

or did I think so and then

1:30:46

they can put it on themselves and maybe that will

1:30:48

cause its own problems mm-hmm spoilers

1:30:52

so that's

1:30:54

it Andrew if folks

1:30:56

have thoughts on the Iliad

1:30:58

they can always send them to overdue

1:31:00

[email protected] or hit us up on social

1:31:02

media at overdue pod if

1:31:06

folks know just thank the patrons this

1:31:08

episode no this is

1:31:11

a big thing yeah this is the one that goes

1:31:13

out to everybody if folks want to know more about

1:31:15

the show where do they go overdue podcast commas our

1:31:17

internet website up there we have all kinds of links

1:31:19

to the books that we are reading we also

1:31:22

have if you want to listen to

1:31:24

these episodes early we have a patreon

1:31:26

page patreon.com/overdue pod get access to all

1:31:28

kinds of bonus episodes early not just

1:31:30

stop home or time sit

1:31:33

in on live stream recordings of

1:31:36

different stuff always have

1:31:38

a good time with those usually it's something a

1:31:40

little bit a little bit lighter a little bit

1:31:42

goofy the chat really pops off our next one

1:31:44

is gonna be December who knows

1:31:46

what it could be who knows what it could be

1:31:49

wink vote on

1:31:51

our monthly schedule we each

1:31:53

month we do a book that is picked

1:31:56

by our patrons out of three options so you could

1:31:59

you could do that as well. Yep,

1:32:03

patreon.com/Overdupont. Okay, Craig, I

1:32:05

think what now happens.

1:32:08

So on our next episode

1:32:10

of Stop Homer Time with Iliad, I

1:32:12

believe we are going to do three

1:32:14

books, books five through seven. So

1:32:18

if you're reading along with us, plan for

1:32:20

that. And

1:32:23

if you're not, then plan

1:32:25

for that. Yeah, plan for something else. I don't know.

1:32:27

I'm not your dad. Andrew, what

1:32:29

do we say at the end of every episode

1:32:31

of Stop Homer Time? See you later, dog face.

1:33:03

That was a HeadGum Podcast.